Читать книгу She Can't Say No to the Greek Tycoon - Annie West - Страница 15

AFTER the call ended Maddie stood immobile under the shower, her brow furrowed, as she grappled with Joan Ryan’s revelations, and what they meant.

Thanks to Dimitri’s generosity her parents’ home and livelihood were safe. There was, of course, huge relief because from the start he had led her to believe that her family would be out of their new home and business like a shot if she didn’t toe the line and stick with their marriage—but the question remained.

Why? Why had he done that?

To force her to resume her marital duties? Share his bed until the child he needed was conceived.

Obvious.

And yet …

That kind of thoughtful generosity didn’t gel with the kind of guy she had categorised him as being—a heartless blackmailer who would use any means to get what he wanted and suffer not one pang of conscience when he made her family face real hardship when he’d got it, because they were unimportant, mere peasants. He didn’t fit that box now.

It looked as if he were the kind of guy who would spend vast amounts of money setting her parents up in their own home and business, generously sorting out the difficulties they were facing and were financially and emotionally unable to cope with.

In the situation that had faced her parents any other needle-sharp, super-wealthy businessman with a philanthropic streak a mile wide might have done what he had done, she conceded, but he would have kept the deeds in his name, as an investment, one among many.

But Dimitri had gone one huge stride further. His generosity shook her, made her acknowledge that he wasn’t all as bad as she had named him. Far from it.

Could she have misjudged him in other aspects of their relationship?

Irini?

The attention he lavished on the other woman when she was around—which had always been far too often for Maddie’s liking—could be explained away by the fact that his aunt had counted her as one of the family from the time of her birth. And the relationship had rubbed off because for Dimtri family was all important.

Having lost both his parents at an early age, he was determined to create a family of his own. She could understand that because he would lavish care on anyone he considered part of his family, as witness how he had helped his parents-by-marriage.

But she couldn’t explain away that overheard telephone conversation when he had confirmed his love for the beautiful Greek woman, dropped everything and shot off to be with her. Nothing could. Or the way the two of them had vanished together during the week before he’d brought her here to this island. And, although he hadn’t confirmed it—or denied it either, come to that—the intimate-sounding phone call she’d interrupted had to have been to Irini, breaking the news of the pregnancy they had both waited so anxiously for.

And Irini’s spiteful warning on the night of that party, spelling out exactly why the man who was probably the most eligible bachelor in the whole of Greece had chosen to marry an insignificant nobody like her, was solid, irrefutable fact.

Her mind preoccupied, Maddie dressed and went down to find him, uselessly wishing yet again that she had never taken Amanda’s advice and kept quiet about Irini’s warning, sticking her head in the sand and putting it down to the malicious spite of a jealous woman.

Her pride had stopped her flinging what she knew and what she strongly suspected at him after he had flown to England to find her and force her to return to him. And now, it seemed, it was too late.

He had categorically stated that he no longer wished to know why she had left him. He wouldn’t listen and, knowing him, his masculine pride, she could understand why. In leaving him, demanding a divorce, she had rejected him and all that he was. His ego wouldn’t let him listen to why she had done it. Not if he wanted them to start over, wipe the slate clean. Make the marriage work.

Until the safe delivery of their child?

‘We’ll stop here. You mustn’t overtire yourself.’ A couple of days ago she had accused him of wrapping her in cotton wool. True, he conceded with a wry twist of his mouth. He simply couldn’t help himself. He took this pregnancy seriously, and his part in it was to cherish her.

Dimitri slid the strap of the picnic bag off one broad shoulder as they reached one of his favourite spots on the island. A gentle green hollow beside an abundant freshwater spring, shaded from the burning sun by a grove of ancient, long-neglected olive trees.

Golden eyes soft and slightly narrowed between thick black lashes, he watched her wander over the lush green grass, down to where the water bubbled into a natural stone basin. The gauzy cotton skirt she was wearing, in shades of primrose, pale blue and cream moved against the lovely legs that had acquired a healthy tan over the week they had spent here. He adored looking at her. He only had to look at her to want her.

Their time here together during this past week had been perfect. Their marriage was back on track.

Or almost.

Swimming in the pool or in the gentle waters of one of the small bays, exploring the island and the dozens of tiny beaches, lazy afternoons and languid evenings, hot sex—everything was pointing to her willingness to put the recent past behind them, to make a fresh start, as he had wanted, for the sake of the coming child.

Except …

He missed her once-ready, infectious laughter. Had caught the wistful look in those clear blue eyes, quickly extinguished when his eyes connected with hers. But it was there, all the same, in his memory.

It troubled him. But no way was he prepared to question her.

Because he wouldn’t like the answer?

The thought came unbidden. She’d wanted a divorce. Since the news of her pregnancy there was no chance of that. And even if he strongly suspected her reasons, he would have to live with those suspicions and do his damnedest to disregard them. If she’d wanted her freedom with the financial cushion of a hefty slice of alimony he didn’t want to hear her confess it, not now!

He’d said they were to make a fresh start, wipe the slate clean. Every child had a right to a close, loving family, the care of both parents, and he had a duty to provide it.

And that was how it was going to be. His decision. End of story. Their future and that of the coming child was all that mattered—unsullied by a knowledge he didn’t want to have.

Thrusting the unwelcome and rare bout of introspection out of his head, he strode towards her. She was kneeling by the spring, her hands gliding slowly back and forth in the cool clear water. As he reached her she glanced up at him from beneath the wide brim of the straw hat he insisted she wear and smiled. Her smile touched his heart, turned it over. It always did.

‘It’s lovely! So cool!’

His heart twisted, the breath in his lungs tightening. The band of freckles across her neat little nose was more pronounced, and perspiration dewed her short upper lip. The blue of her eyes between those thick fringing lashes was clear and perfect. She was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

Leaning forward, she cupped her hands in the water and sluiced it over her face in one graceful movement, then rose to her feet, gasping just a little as her hat tumbled off her head.

Her skin glistened. Droplets trickled onto the soft, tempting skin between firm breasts that were partly exposed by the buttons she’d undone at the front of the sleeveless, cream-coloured fine cotton cropped top she was wearing. With him she was so uninhibited, her sexuality so natural. It blew his mind.

Instinctively, his hands went to her upper arms to steady her. He heard the tiny huff of expelled breath as her soft lips parted at his touch, felt the inevitable answering excitement tighten his body.

Those soft, full lips promised passion—the spectacular passion that neither of them could deny. He bent his head and touched them with his own, revelled in her immediate response. Driven as he always was with her, he parted his mouth from hers, going lower, to capture the crystal droplets that sparkled between her breasts. His hands followed. Hands and mouth.

His hunger for her was as intense as ever, but, mindful of the tiny life inside her, he was now more than ordinarily gentle as he lowered her to the cool green earth. Ignoring the way her body arched impatiently into his, he slowly removed her clothing, the fever grew in her beautiful eyes as fine tremors of tension rippled over her gorgeous nakedness when his hands, a whisper of motion, moved over her engorged, divine breasts, down over the slight curve of her tummy to rest, trembling now, on the springy nest of curls between her parted thighs.

He heard her near-desperate sigh of need just as he felt control slip away from him, and he breathed her name, thrusting with as much tenderness as he could find deep inside her as she wrapped her legs around his narrow hips in eager welcome.

Later—how much later Maddie neither knew nor cared—Dimitri moved in her arms, his own arms releasing her, the smile he gave her soft and satisfied. Precisely mirroring her own, she guessed.

It was always like this for them. They only had to touch each other and hot passion, driven need took over, Maddie dreamily acknowledged as he got to his feet, locating his stone-coloured chinos and getting into them with the economy of movement that was so much a part of him.

‘We forgot the picnic. Xanthe will be irredeemably upset if we take it back untouched.’ Humour warmed his fantastic amber eyes as they caressed her flushed features. ‘Get dressed, chrysi mou, while I sort it out.’

Hoisting herself up on one elbow, the lush grass cool beneath her naked body, the slight breeze from the sea caressing her skin, she watched him move away to the lip of the green hollow where he had left the picnic bag Xanthe had filled for them this morning, missing his physical closeness already.

A too-familiar ache took possession of the region around her heart. His absence from her side, short-lived though it was, still felt like a pain.

When she was with him, close, talking, swimming, lazily exploring the island, touching, hands clasped, fingers entwined she could forget—lose herself in the wonder of him, even convince herself that he wanted a happy, stable marriage as much as she did, that she came first with him and always would.

And their frequent lovemaking had nothing to do with primal animal lust. At least to her it always seemed so. There was passion, yes, but tenderness too, a feeling of closeness, of a bond of deep love that couldn’t be broken. And yet.

Separated from him, even for a short while, at such a small physical distance, as she was now, she felt the doubts return, chilling her, eating into her. And the searing near-unbearable sorrow.

At the start of this week she had made up her mind to go along with his fresh-start dictate, because that would put him off guard, make it much easier for her to bring her plans to fruition, to make her bid for freedom when they returned to Athens and put herself and her coming baby right out of his and Irini’s reach.

And now she knew that whatever she did her family’s home and livelihood were safe, there was not a single thing to stop her.

But every hour that passed had made her hate that decision, despise herself for reaching it. It had been made with her head, but her heart had swiftly overruled her brain, leading her to fall ever more deeply in love with him, wanting, needing to be with him always.

The thought of leaving him broke her heart.

Aware that Dimitri had almost finished laying out the food he’d taken from the cooler-bag on the vivid scarlet cloth Xanthe had provided, Maddie pulled herself together and hurried into her discarded clothing.

And made her mind up.

Despite his firmly stated order that they were to forget she’d ever wanted to end their marriage and were never to speak of it, she was going to have to. Would tell him exactly what Irini had told her. He would, in any case, staunchly deny it, in view of her pregnancy. That was more than a strong possibility. But at least he would know the truth of what had lain behind her headlong flight from him and their marriage. She owed herself that much.

‘Come, slowcoach! Remember our baby is hungry, even if you are not!’

That slow, magical smile of his made her poor heart flip over. He had straightened, was standing tall and proud now, hands on his narrow hips, bare feet planted firmly, a little apart, on the sun-warmed sparse grass at the top of the bank. He was shirtless, his magnificent upper body exposed, his skin sleek, tanned olive by the Greek sun. Much too touchable.

As usual his sexuality disorientated her, but her eyes shadowed as she walked towards him, and she knew she had to be strong and tell him the truth. But feed it in gradually, at the right opportunity. That way maybe she’d get the truth from him.

Blurting it out like a bolshie teenager might release the knot of tension that coiled painfully inside her whenever she thought of what Irini had told her, of his aunt’s unpleasant comments about her gross unsuitability as a bride for her high-status nephew, remembered the tone of his voice as he’d assured the other woman that he loved her.

Yes, getting it off her chest, where it festered, out into the open, might release that tension. But hurl the accusation at him and he’d instinctively and immediately deny it.

She had to be more subtle than that.

That look was back in her eyes again, Dimitri noted, his own brows lowering in response as she sank onto the ground beside the lavish spread. Perhaps time and patience on his part would remove it. The thing to do, he assured himself firmly, was to concentrate on the positive side of their marriage. Forget everything else.

‘How long can we stay here?’ Even to her own ears her voice sounded overly-bright, she decided helplessly as she obeyed his hand gesture and helped herself to one of Xanthe’s delicious stuffed vine leaves.

‘Bored already?’ Lightly said, but the thread of anxiety was there. He deplored it.

‘Not at all. Just interested. It’s so lovely here.’ The morsel eaten, she reached for a tiny cheese pastry, not looking at him until he told her, ‘Another two weeks, pethi mou, and then back to Athens to get the refurbishment of the nursery wing in hand, and get you to a top-notch gynaecologist. Sound good?’

Glancing at him then, she ached with love for him, felt an onslaught of longing that was frightening in its intensity. He was so compelling, so beautiful. The hard, tanned planes of his sculpted features, the soft sable hair, the sensual line of the mouth that promised and delivered heaven, the warm golden eyes.

The ache intensified. Two more weeks of ecstatic self-delusion and then.

Reaching forward, he opened a flask and filled two glasses, telling her, ‘There are lemon trees here. Yiannis tends them and sells the ripe fruit on the mainland. And Xanthe makes the best lemonade you will ever have tasted.’ He handed a glass to her and tipped his own against it. ‘A toast. To our baby—may he or she live long and happy and much loved!’

Her eyes misting as the delicious chilled liquid slid down her parched throat, Maddie thought, He does want our child, more than anything. The only contentious issue was why.

He confirmed it when he told her smokily, ‘I am filled with delight at the thought of the child you will give me, my Maddie.’ Almost reverently he laid a hand on her tummy, surprising her with his words. ‘Before our marriage we spoke of our desire for children, do you remember?’

Maddie dipped her head in silent acknowledgement. Not answering vocally because her throat had tightened too much to allow her to speak. Not looking at him, although she could feel his eyes on her.

Of course she remembered! He had been at pains to make sure she wanted his baby before the actual low-key ceremony because that had been the whole point of the exercise, hadn’t it? And, gullible sucker that she’d been then, her head spinning at the way he’d romanced her, swept her off her usually firmly-grounded feet, she’d given him the answer he’d been looking for. Of course she wanted children—his children. The more the merrier!

If she’d turned round and told him that, no, she didn’t want motherhood for at least ten years—if then, if ever—the wedding would never have taken place. He would have disappeared in a puff of smoke! Would it have happened that way? Dear God, she hoped not! But how could she know?

Then further confounded her when he said, with a sincerity she could not doubt, ‘I confess I would like more than one child, but it’s not a burning issue. Growing up, I missed my parents, wished they were still alive, wished I had brothers and sisters, a close family.’

Naked, powerful, sun-kissed shoulders lifted in a wry shrug. ‘I guess that explains why I would like a whole gang of them!’ His eyes held hers—soft eyes, soft mouth, soft smile. ‘But I promise you, chrysi mou, there is no pressure. I might desire to give you at least three babies, but it will be for you and you alone to decide. If you decide that one pregnancy is enough for you, then he or she will be enough for me, too. This I promise.’